


Fealty

by LilithEncodead



Category: Hellsing
Genre: Budding Love, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, post millennium
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-24
Updated: 2018-03-24
Packaged: 2019-04-07 11:29:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14079942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilithEncodead/pseuds/LilithEncodead
Summary: Integra looks back on the aftermath of “the zeppelin incident,” taking comfort in the devotion of her new pet vampire.





	Fealty

A pale sickle moon shone on the Hellsing manor through the long, narrow windows of the library, getting caught up in strings and clouds of cigar smoke, eddying and dissipating lazily, like a storm in retreat. Integra read beneath the haze by the light of a dull table lamp, flashing a glare across her spectacles in the gloom, as she pieced together fragments of poetry (of all things). In the years before Millennium, there had been no time for such frivolous things, narrowing her scholarly pursuits strictly to the church and the occult, formulating the world in stark black and white. Poetry had always been a much greyer, emotional area. But now, Integra could catch an hour, maybe two after the witching hour to pursue something which was neither demonic nor undead – to be both inside and outside a book, to be both present and away – alone.

Her currant occupancy was a disjointed verse of Ellen West –

_“Why am I a girl?_

_I ask my doctors, and they tell me they don’t know, that it is just “given”_

_But it has such_

_Implications – ;_

_and sometimes_

_I even feel like a girl.”_

Integra lit a fresh cigar and reassessed her position. Perhaps alone was not always the best place to be. She knew that the empty spaces surrounding her were vulnerable to attack from within. Thoughts from the past would hatch from within her, creeping at her side with hook in hand, ready to pull her back to the events of two years ago. The smoke, the blood, the destruction – the immeasurable loss – simply in acknowledging it, she was back there; the Nazi zeppelin crumbling around her, betrayed, bereft and wounded –

                  She drew her fingers instinctively to the eye-patch covering her left eye socket. With a light tap, it sounded a hollow, alien sound through her head –

with Seras at her side.

“I’m tired.” She really was there, still. Part of her would always be there. “Let us return home… to what’s left of it.” Her vampire had looked to her then with such an absolute loyalty, that obedience would no longer be a question, but her sole purpose. “Let’s go!” as ordered Seras drew her Master close to her and took to the sky, soaring up through the ruins of the pretend war, with a final explosion swelling up at their heels, as though it were propelling them forward.

Numbed, Integra had watched the fires dwindle and die across London from above, rivers of blood still flowing through the streets. She did not marvel at Seras’s dark shadow wings, or the loss of her eye. The senselessness of it all washed over her and into her system like an anaesthetic. When they landed at the manor, Seras eased into the drop with such care that Integra barely felt the transition as her feet met with the ground.

“Take me to the armoury.” She ordered, calmly, as though nothing was wrong.

“Syr…” Seras replied, not releasing her grip on her Master for fear that she would not be able to stand again “We should really get you to bed and have you patched up. Your wounds—”

“Not yet,” she fixed Seras with a bee-sting stare “Take me to the armoury. That’s an order.”

And with that the dark angel beside her transformed into the sweet young woman she had met only a short while ago, wide-eyed and eager to please. “Y-yes Syr!”

Seras held Integra steady as they made their way through the ruins of the manor house. Whole walls were blown away and stained with blood, sorrowfully incomplete as a half-eaten carcass, left to rot under the light of the sun. Cursing under her breath, Integra’s steps faltered as her and Seras made their way up the stairs to what was left of the armoury. A large section of the roof was missing, flooding the room with the light of an amber sunset. Shattered glass and rubble carpeted the floor. The walls were sparse as most of the racks and cabinets had already been pillaged of their heavier and more sophisticated weaponry. The dust had not yet settled, as the spirit of last night’s battle still lingered hungrily in the air, waiting for bloodshed yet to come.

Stepping clear of Seras, Integra took up a ceremonial sword from the ground. A deep concern furrowed the former police girl’s soft, trusting face.

“Syr Integra…” she attempted.

“On your knees,” Integra’s voice filled the space in her signature commanding fashion, like a gavel, holding the sword squarely pointed at Seras, commanding her to kneel. She didn’t need telling twice, keeping her eyes on her Master’s, Seras dropped to her knees, respectfully silent.

“Tell me, Seras Victoria,” she began, cold and officious “Why are you still here? I have seen the power that breeds within you, today. Your true Master is dead, and our organisation, our home, has been laid to waste. Why do you remain by my side?”

Seras looked up into her Master’s face in both fear and confusion, pleading for her not to question her, not to doubt her. She stayed, because it was all she knew to do, all her true nature would allow. There was no other option in her eyes. But this would not suffice.

“Answer me!” Integra commanded again, voice breaking with something like impatience.

“You are the master of my master!” she cried out, matching Integra’s desperation “I am loyal to this organisation, and I am loyal to you. My renewed strength in your service proves that rather than calling it into question. Through all this terrible misfortune…” she grew distant behind the eyes for a split fraction of a second “Mr Bernadotte, and Walter… you are all I have left. I will not leave you, Syr.”

A chill breeze passed softly through the room as Seras stayed frozen in place beneath the sword’s edge, head bowed, eyes shut tight. Her shadow stroked the air around her, timidly restraining itself close to what was left of her human body. In that moment – that one long moment at the end of all this madness – Integra knew that she could strike her down, and that Seras would allow her to strike her down; not because she wanted to die, but because she would rather die than raise a hand to her Master. As this reassurance washed over her, Integra felt herself hollowed out, overcome with a need – a sickening need – for more.

“Swear it.” She demanded, outwardly stoic and inwardly screaming “Swear your fealty to me.”

Seras took a moment to collect herself, to find the truth in her heart, and remember the words from her training. When she spoke her voice was clear, almost soothing:

“I, Seras Victoria, do swear that I will be faithful and bare true allegiance to you, Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing and your organisation, according to law. So help me God.”

“So help me God…” Integra echoed, lowering the sword as her shoulders grew slack. A wave of incredible heat rushed steadily to her wound. The room grew distant from her and began to tip. She must have swayed on her feet because Seras sprung up to meet her, holding her by the shoulders, then the waist. Her shadow wove itself around Integra’s body, stroking her lightly, like a cat walking a figure of eight between its master’s legs.. Slowly, Integra stepped back, dropping the sword at her side with an abrupt clatter.

“Know this,” she spoke clearly through a bright red fog of pain “After your service today, I am forever in your debt. Even as you work as my subordinate; the contract between you and I is very different than the contract between my family and Alucard. I have chosen you just as you have chosen me. As readily as you would lay down your life for me – would die for you. And those who stand against us will be scorched from the earth in the fires of my fury, they will be…”

Coming back to herself, Integra regarded her cigar, now a precarious tower of ash protruding from her fingers. She could not recall what had happened after that in the armoury, concluding that she must have collapsed due to the severity of her wounds.

 The days and nights which followed had been as vague and as terrible as a fever dream, split apart into unclear scraps of time and images across her memory. She recalled only that Seras had not left her side, tending to her wounds in the dark as they awaited medical aid from outside of Europe. Slipping in and out of consciousness, Integra had only been able to make out disjointed corners of her bed chambers, warm, quiet and insular as the cosmic soup waters of the womb. The blood red luminescence of Seras’s shadow had enveloped her, coiled around the bed in a protective embrace. Sometimes, her new protector would lie beside her, rape-seed yellow head close to her chest, listening to her heartbeat, watching her breath rise and fall with complete empathy. Seras spoke aloud, now and again, as though hoping her new master would reply:

“Please, Syr,” softly into the dark “accept my desire to remain in your service. You can’t die. I won’t let you die.”

_“                            and sometimes_

_I even feel like a girl.”_

How desperate those days had been – so far from the life and order they had fought to rebuild. Integra closed the book in front of her and set it aside, standing to observe the night outside of the window, immersing herself in the present. The flat lawns of the estate stretched out before her, crisp and pale in the moonlight – deeply quiet and beautiful but ultimately, lonesome.

As if to reassure her, Seras’s shadow glinted across the window pane, lingering slowly over Integra’s cheek, flitting through each shelf and book in the library, before disappearing down the hallway, towards the basement. Alone was a dangerous place to be; however, she was never alone.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading ~ I'm very new to Hellsing, ended up watching it when 'The Beast from the East' snowed our whole village in. I really hope to write a more in-depth story for this pairing soon xx


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